Mr. Gialanella spent two years as a consultant with Chi Systems in Ann Arbor, Michigan where he developed nursing management information and staff scheduling systems and performed long range planning, functional and space programming, and staffing and operations analyses for hospitals throughout the United States. John developed evaluation and space programming methodologies for hospital special care units for the Health Services and Promotion Branch, Health and Welfare, Canada, which were used by governmental and hospital staff, architects, and consultants throughout the provinces. In addition, he planned and designed prototype patient care units for community hospitals and university medical centers.

As a nine-year employee and eventually vice president of DJ Sullivan & Associates, John directed patient acuity-based nurse staffing projects, medical staff management, and operating room analysis projects for hospitals of various sizes. He led the OR Consulting Division upon its initiation.

Employed in 1987 by the University of Michigan Hospitals as an internal consultant, Mr. Gialanella’s initial focus was on providing decision support services to the medical center’s executive team. He conducted projects which established a new approach to nursing personnel budgeting, and which identified Surgery Department operations improvements leading to multimillion-dollar revenue increases and resource efficiency gains.

In 1991, Mr. Gialanella accepted the position of Director of Materiel Services for the UM Hospitals. The department employs 300 staff and operates within an expense budget of $20 million and a revenue budget of $42 million. Major departmental functions include sterile processing; receiving, JIT warehousing; bulk distribution; PAR level replenishment; patient equipment; patient transportation; laundry; mail; and shuttle services His initial charge was to develop a departmental emphasis on customer service while maintaining and expanding the historical roles in logistics and commodity management. Through continuous improvement efforts, the department identified and validated quality indicators of customer satisfaction, negotiated service level agreements with internal customers, measured performance against these standards, and tied performance evaluations and salary increases directly to customer satisfaction. This charge was successfully carried out: customer satisfaction levels reached an all time high, concomitant with the department achieving an institutionally mandated 25% expense budget reduction; departmental productivity indicators were in the best 25th percentile of UHC and VHA comparatives. Mr. Gialanella revised the medical-surgical product acquisition process at UMMC: negotiating five year contracts with all major manufacturers, service agreements with two distributors, and initiation of a supplier certification process for all major vendors. As a result, net delivered product cost was lower during the new contracts’ five-year period than it was for the preceding years. His attention was then directed towards expanding the influence of materiel management through consultative efforts with medical center business units to improve the management of department-specific commodities, establishing a supply link with the medical center’s expanding network of satellite clinics and alternate care sites, and, coordinating all support services for a 60,000 sq. ft. primary care facility which opened in September, 1996. He was nominated by his staff and awarded “Materiel Manager of the Year” for 1995 by Healthcare Purchasing News.

Mr. Gialanella rejoined DJS/a in July of 1996 to lead the company’s OR Materiel Management Product Line. With the August 1996 acquisition of DJS/a by Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems Inc. he assumed responsibility for the overall quality of all surgery project engagements and the direct supervision of all consultants. In April of 1998 John became Senior Consulting Executive for Surgery where he focused on client need identification and work plan development and responsibility for overall engagement outcomes, both directing and delivering project work. As Vice President and Founder of the Surgery Management Improvement Group Inc. in 2002, he continues in this role.